John Lithgow is one of those actors where, no matter how mediocre the film, he’s always interesting to watch. His segment in the film version of The Twilight Zone, based on the original series entry Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, was anything but medicore. It takes a real actor to out-hysteric William Shatner, but Lithgow somehow manages it as a harried aviophobic who keeps seeing a gremlin on the wing of the airplane he is flying in.

While the scene featured here occurs before the fireworks really get started, its weirdness serves to put both Lithgow’s character, and the audience, ill at ease.

We’ve gone through 18 different 60’s Spidey themes over the last 18 days, and as a bonus to celebrate today’s premiere of Spider-Man: Homecoming, here is a video showing how Michael Giacchino, music composer of the latest Spidey film, has actually incorporated the 60’s theme into the movie’s music. I think it’s a fitting tribute to one of the most endearing and enduring parts of Spider-Man history:

Bill had a lot of problems with the 2017 ‘Wonder Woman’ film; Chad, not so much. We don our satin tights and fight for our rights to complain in the Nerdstalking review of this important DC film. There’s no ‘Nerdly News’ segment this episode; we smash right through the window and tackle the movie without delay.

Where we celebrate (and vilify) the highs (and lows) of 2016. We update previous Nerdstalking topics such as ‘Batman v Superman’, ‘The Twilight Zone’ and Stephen King, and pick at the scabs left by the many celebrity deaths of 2016 including Carrie Fisher. To top things off, we put the “Death” in “Death Star” with …

Where we review the many dimensions of Marvel’s latest superhero flick, featuring the Master of the Mystic Arts. We start off though talking about America’s latest supervillain, Donald Trump, the ‘Wonder Woman’ movie, the announcement of the Nintendo Switch game console, the ‘Lego Batman Movie’, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2: Electric Boogaloo’, Chad’s run-in with …

Here is your crew of the USCSS Nostromo, tasked with hauling valuable ore from the outer colonies to Earth. Just a group of people trying to do a job, until a mysterious signal lures nearly all of them into the jaws of something horrible. Left to right, you have Kane, XO; Lambert, navigator; Dallas, captain; …

It seems an oxymoron to describe a crew on a craft in deep space as ‘grounded’, but that’s exactly what the Nostromo personnel in Alien feel like: a group of every-person truckers in space, just doing a job and looking to get paid at the end of it. Except for Ash, there’s something wrong with that twitchy, …

Design aspects of Alien were divided among various artists, and French illustrator Jean Girard aka Moebius was tasked with designing the outfits for the film, worn both internally and externally by the Nostromo crew. His spacesuits went through an evolution, dictated by the changing nature of the stormy planetoid they landed on according to various script …

You can’t have a discussion about the Alien films without talking about the beautifully horrible works of Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger. Creating the creature, its environment, and the derelict spaceship in which it is found, Giger’s designs for the film reverberated not only throughout the series but also across the cinematic landscape as a whole. When …

It’s easy to see why James Cameron originally cast actor James Remar as Cpl. Hicks in Aliens. Remar looked good in the armour, exuded a commanding presence and even had a history with producer Walter Hill, having appeared as Ajax in the Hill-produced classic The Warriors. But it was not to be. There are conflicting reports as to …

Here is a taste of what’s coming up on Nerdstalking in October. These are a few pages of the original storyboards Ridley Scott created when he got the go-ahead from 20th Century Fox to make Alien. An artist as well as a director with only one feature movie behind him (1977’s The Duelists), Scott drew every major beat in …